Nov. 15, 2020
Sometimes I need to find a video I’ve watched but I can’t remember the name of it, so I scroll down my YouTube watch history to see if I can find it. I was doing that today when I came across my entire search history for Nov. 15, 2020 and had to marvel at its greatness. Go ahead, take a look.
I had no recollection of searching for any of these videos, but I knew I’ve seen them all before Nov. 15th. I assumed I was making a bike-themed playlist of some sort to send to someone, but none of my friends remember receiving one. After twenty minutes of staring at that day’s searches and rewatching the best ones, I remembered why I’d watched them! It was for a scene I was writing for my book. In the scene, two characters get in a karate bike fight, and even though it’s a very absurd scene, I wanted it to be as realistic as possible, so I watched a bunch of references to get a feel for exactly what kind of bonkers bike action I wanted to describe.
I use YouTube like this all the time, and I’m sure many other writers and artists do as well, but seeing my search history laid out in such a linear way, stirred something in me. It was like being able to look outside of myself and watch me work. Once I’d realized why I’d searched for these specific videos, I could see my entire thought process unfold from one video to the next.
Not nearly enough people talk about this use case for YouTube. Everyone knows about utilizing it to learn a skill or specific program, but rarely does anyone mention how useful YouTube is at showing a smattering of a world we don’t walk in to help illustrate a better picture of it.
I know it seems like a useless exercise, but I’d like to walk you through my thought process on why I watched these videos and what I got out of them. I’m hoping if I explain the why before letting you read the rough draft of the scene that came from these searches, you may enjoy the scene slightly more (maybe 🤞🏽).
Rad Bike Dance Off
Of course, I started with Rad. It’s the quintessential good/bad ‘80s BMX movie. It has everything the 1980s bike scene could offer: racing, freestyle vert, flatland, and a totally normal prom bike dance. It’s a magical film and combined with Pacific Blue, it’s the inspiration not only for the bike fight, but also a large majority of Sheriff James Patterson’s personality.
What I love about Rad’s dance-off scene (besides its wonderfully gratuitous use of slow-motion) is that it’s very stupid, but it pretends it’s not. I accept it because it accepts itself. It’s beyond ludicrous that anything like a bike dace off would happen at a dance, yet the logic of the film allows it, so I allow it.
That’s the feeling I want to evoke with the book I’m writing. I want to take the reader to an insane town with absurd rules, but while they’re there, I want them to feel like there’s nothing weird about how weird it is. I want them to notice the characters accepting the rules of the world without flinching and to do the same. I typically love any piece of media that manages to pull this feeling off.
I also love this prom bike dance because it’s delightfully bonkers on so many levels:
Everyone thinks bikes are cool and aren’t mad at the two people on bikes taking over the entire dance floor.
There’s an announcer at their prom.
The Mongoose Racing Team watching are so humiliated by the whole affair that they leave in embarrassment.
Use of “Send Me An Angel” is chefs kiss.
Lori Laughlin’s moves are so good you almost want to forgive her for the whole college bribery scandal (almost). But really, the slow-mo arms out and sitting on the bike when we can’t see the wheels is primo comedy.
Honestly, I should probably stop here and make this about the movie Rad, but I must continue. Here’s the trailer for anyone interested:
Now, for those who didn’t grow up in the ‘80s with a sick Mongoose, a BMX bike is simply a bike originally designed to race off-road on dirt motocross tracks (BMX stands for Bike Motocross). The bikes became all the rage in the 1980s and pretty much every suburban kid I knew had one well into the late ‘90s. I had a BMX bike, but only rode it around for fun. My brother raced BMX and I remember watching him at the local YMCA track and thinking it was a fun thing I’d never want to try.
QUICK ASIDE: Okay, so, time is different for writing, but what looks like a new paragraph is four hours later. As I wrote the above paragraph, I remembered that I’m the keeper of all our old family videos. I thought, “Hey, maybe there’s some video of my brother Brad racing his bike in the ‘80s or ‘90s on that YMCA track. That would be a fun way to give a personal angle to my connection to BMX. So I’m scrubbing through the old family videos and I find some video of my brother racing. Great, I thought! I scrub to the beginning and it’s me, on the day I was born, laying in an incubator, then BAM! Hard cut to a BMX bike race! My dad recorded over part of my birth video to get this sick BMX race. I laughed real hard and felt like I had to add the entire bit. Kind of feels like the beginning of one of those “life flashing before your eyes” montages.
Sorry, back to the BMX explanation. There are roughly 4 different kinds of BMX.
Dirt – Riders race or do tricks on a dirt track.
Street – Bikers do tricks on whatever is on the streets (think your average skateboard video but with bikes instead of skateboards),
Vert – People doing tricks on half pipes or a street course.
Flatland – Doing sweet tricks on the flat ground.
As is evident by my search history, flatland was what I was most interested in. The reason for this is because it’s got the best fight vibes. They’re flipping and jumping all over the place like a 90s karate movie, and that feels the funniest to me.
Hilltop Hoods
I’m not going to cover each one of these flatland videos because they all bleed into each other and you get the point, but I wanted to showcase the Hilltop Hoods video because it’s the one that I pulled the majority of the bike fight choreography from. The front tire balancing, the flipping, jumping, spinning, and twirling all make an appearance. Part of the allure for me was that this video felt like one Patterson would have had a worn-out VHS copy of.
Pacific Blue
If you don’t know what the TV show Pacific Blue is about, then I don’t know what you’ve been doing with your life. The show centers around Santa Monica bike cops stopping all sorts of crime no bike cop would ever stop. Mario Lopez came in later to young up the show, but no matter how hard they tried, they still couldn’t make bike cops cool.
The reason I went for Pacific Blue is that it’s the other half of one of the main character’s motivations. James Patterson is obsessed with the show. All he ever wanted to be was a bike cop, but his well-connected father forced him into becoming a detective, then Sheriff. He watches the show when he’s in a dark place. It’s his Glory Days escape.
Most of the fights and stunts in Pacific Blue were done by Hans Rey. He’s kind of the godfather of mountain bike stunt work. I’ve seen his videos enough to not need to watch them that day, but he’s a mountain bike legend. Only problem was that my two characters are fighting on road bikes.
So that’s where the Martyn Ashton video came in. In the scene I’m writing, Sheriff James Patterson is chasing Ed Svester, and they’re both on road bikes. I wanted to know whether or not I could combine everything I’d been imagining with the BMX fighting styles and the mountain bike stunts, and map them to a road bike fight.
Road bikes notoriously fragile. They aren’t meant to do what BMX and mountain bikes do. They have skinny tires, they’re incredibly rigid, and they have weird curved handlebars no one knows how to use. Martyn Ashton is one of the only people I’ve ever seen do these kinds of stunts on a road bike, so if he could hit the notes I was looking for, then I knew I couldn’t write the scene.
After watching the three Road Bike Party videos, I felt confident in the absurdity I’d been planning for my bike fight.
But before writing the the scene, I wanted to become a bit more familiar with the BMX trick vernacular. I found a list of bike trick names and combined them with Rand and Lan’s sword fighting stance names from the Wheel of Time series because it made me giggle.
So, now that I’ve explained the process, here is a rough draft of the scene. All you really need to know is that Ed is being chased by Patterson during a bike race. Patterson was drunk at the beginning of the race so he had someone tape his feet to the pedals. The scene starts once Patterson catches up with Ed.
Bike Fight Scene
Pinot Noir Except by Alex Sargeant (rough)
“Looks like we’re about to have an old-fashioned bike fight on our hands,” said Patterson, balancing himself by moving his bike from left to right between his legs thanks to the tape locking his feet to the petals.
Ed chuckled. “Now might be a good time to tell you I studied Bike Fu for 30 years. I earned my black heart monitor belt when you were still a fat little babe.”
“I’m still a fat babe! Cobra Bai-k for life!”
The two men hopped up onto their hind wheels, front tires lifted in the air, slightly tilted, and exuding vibes of rearing horses performing a sacred mating ritual. Using little bunny hops on their back tires, they circled, each man looking for an opportunity to strike. Their wheels made gentle contact, probing for weaknesses the way boxers do at the beginning of a match. Patterson knocked Ed’s wheel away after his second probe, leaving Ed slightly off balance. Patterson twirled his bike three-hundred-sixty degrees, connecting his tire with Ed’s. The blow knocked Ed’s bike back onto two wheels, and the Sheriff, not missing a beat, slammed his front tire down toward Ed, aiming to crush the man. Ed side hopped, narrowly avoiding the blow. The old man countered by leaning onto his front tire and swinging the back half of his bicycle to deliver a devastating tailwhip across Patterson’s face.
The blow of the tailwhip hit with such force, it ripped his feet free from the tape holding them in, allowing him to steady himself on the asphalt and remain upright. Ed had no idea what he’d just unwittingly unleashed. Patterson had watched his brother Skip learn pathetic, unusable moves at his Bike Fu stunt training classes. He knew Bike Fu was a watered-down fighting style. His disdain for Bike Fu sent him on a quest to seek out Bobby Flayer, the former 1980s flatland BMX champion turned Bikewon-Do master. Bobby agreed to take Patterson on as a pupil as long as he dedicated his life to the study of the ancient 1980s art form, or if his dad kept paying him the VIP rate. He’d trained his entire teens and a few sporadic months of his 20s for this moment. A smile spread across the Sheriff’s face as he wiped the blood and asphalt specks from his lips. “And now might be a good time to tell you that I’m a Bikewon-Do master.”
The two martial arts bike enthusiasts pushed their crotches against their handlebars, lifting the back of their bikes as they both lifted a leg over the handlebars, stepping onto the front tire. Taking hold of the back of their respective seats as though they’d choreographed it, both men stepped up onto their front tires with the bike frame and back wheel held up behind them. They balanced themselves by rolling the tire forward and backward and using the fame as a counterbalance. The two men bowed. Now the real fighting could begin.
Patterson hopped and pulled the bike over his head so fast Ed only had enough time to flip his bike up and use it to block the strike. Sparks spew from the clashing chains. They moved like flowing water. Each man effortlessly countering the other’s moves. Patterson twisted himself onto one foot into the Swan Meets Hopeful Sausage position, which Ed responded to by settling into the responsive Duck Eating Bread at Midnight stance. Handlebars spun, tires smashed and skin got little cuts which somehow stung more than the big ones. Ed was on the defensive, and there were only so many times the Wolf Whisking Eggs and Beautiful Baby Babbling Brook Bounce stances could parry Patterson’s relentless attacks.
Bruce, Tammy’s leather-clad falcon, was out for a mid-morning joy flight when he found himself rather confounded as he stared down at two men standing on their bikes. Each one had a foot on the seat and a foot on the handlebars as their bikes seemingly propelled themselves on their own, circling each other as they exchanged karate chops and frantic slaps. He would have stuck around to watch more, but a limping rat that probably wouldn’t notice the jangling of his wallet chain caught his interest.
After a particularly brutal tailwhip clash between the two ended in a draw, Patterson juked as though he was going for another front tire slam move. Ed fell for it, moving his bike over his head for the block before he realized the Sheriff hadn’t lifted his tire, but instead pulled his entire body backward. The backflip uppercut landed a tire under Ed’s chin and sent him reeling, giving Patterson the opening he needed to finish it all. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion now. Two hard pedal rotations into a Superman Tobogganing Crane Hop, to a Fun Fox Jumping Barspin, to a Breeze Under Snarky Owl No-Hander Lander directly into Ed’s chest knocking the old man to the ground. Patterson’s tire pressed into Ed’s sternum, pinning him to the asphalt.
Ed was done for and he knew it. Out of breath, he said, “Okay, fine, you win, I’ll go, just let me up, I think I’m having a heart attack.”
“You didn’t say uncle,” replied Patterson, also out of breath.
“Uncle.”
“Okay, I’ll let you up, but only because you said uncle, and everyone knows saying uncle means you unequivocally give up. It’s like law or something, so I know you won’t do anything stupid because no one breaks uncle.” Removing his tire from Ed’s chest, Patterson got off the bike and put his hands on his knees to catch his breath.
Ed lifted himself off the ground, picked up his bike, and hopped on, bolting down the racecourse. If he couldn’t beat Patterson in a fight, he was going to try and beat him to the finish line.
If you made it this far, you must really search history breakdowns, BMX bikes, or Bike Fu. Either way, thanks for reading. If you want more newsletters like this delivered to your inbox, make sure to subscribe.
Cutting Room Floor
Martyn Ashton broke his back during a demonstration in 2013, but the man is so badass that he’s still riding even though he’s paralyzed.
Danny MacAskill is the king of freestyle stunts. He’s taken Han Rey’s basics and taken them to 11.
Yay YouTube!